


Anesthesia

by pleasancekrillick



Category: F.E.A.R. (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Hallucinations, Medical Horror, Mindfuck, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 20:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18820546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleasancekrillick/pseuds/pleasancekrillick
Summary: A mundane trip to the doctor's office is anything but. Set during FEAR 2.





	Anesthesia

_ It’s the best mindfuck yet _ .

_ Total Recall _

 

He was nearly halfway past his twenties when he finally got around to having his wisdom teeth removed. There was no reason why he waited so long, why he didn’t have it done when he was younger; it just never crossed his mind, and he never saw why it should. It it’s not broke, don’t fix it. But the people in the service insisted, and there was no denying them, so when the time came, he made an appointment and resigned himself to foreign hands engulfed in latex and probing blades. He was surprised to see that he wouldn’t be laid out on a table, but on a kind of reclining chair in a small, and, he was tempted to say, homey room. The metal tray on thin gauze and the two persons in baby blue scrubs, however, effectively disposed of any possible pretense. They all knew why he was here; they made sure of it, asking for his consent and if he had any questions he’d like to ask. Yes and no. He sat down and swung his long legs over, apologizing to the nurse he nearly toppled over, and laid down, pulling up his sleeves and allowing his head to sink back. Tentative fingers tickled his forearm and he instinctively grasped the nurse’s wrist. Dark eyes widened between surgical mask and hair net. 

“I won’t wake up, will I?”

He felt foolish asking the question; it came out childish, almost petulant. He’d been in worse places; faced greater threats than the hair-like needle held in between index and thumb, scintillating under harsh fluorescence.

“Oh goodness, no,” a peal of muffled laughter, the dark eyes bright, “you’ll be sedated, and you’ll barely remember anything once you wake up. And it’s not like what we’ll give you will knock you out. You’re awake, technically speaking, but you won’t recognize or feel anything.”

He isn’t sure how he feels about that.

Perhaps sensing his hesitation, the nurse insisted softly, “I’ll be watching you, keeping you under. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

He exhaled and closed his eyes. The numbing kiss of an alcohol-soaked cotton ball against his arm and the gentle stabbing of the syringe. Sweet air plastered the insides of his cheeks; the tongue dried out, became heavy, and he worried about choking on it. No need to fret over his limbs though—they were gone, swallowed up by the darkness behind his eyes. A veil so thick as to hide his breathing, his heartbeat: a complete obliteration of consciousness.

Or not. 

There is a metallic squealing, the sound slowly rising in intensity with his burgeoning faculties. 

His ears are ringing. His lungs are heaving with effort; he feels a hot plate pressing down on his chest and his arms are too weak to lift it off, he can’t move them at all. Pain lances through them and his eyes are torn open. Unfamiliar masks dance around a vague, gliding sky intersped with hazy lights. He croaks and his legs feebly kick against the air, like those of a newborn.

His efforts are not in vain. A mask descends from the swirling gloom. "Michael Becket, I presume?"

He tries to nod, and when his neck fails to answer, he blinks.

"You were badly hurt in the explosion," briskly speaking, the voice ebbs and flows, "we're gonna fix you right up."

He blinks again. _ Like I'm going to say no to an offer like that _ , he thinks. 

The mask ascends ascends to a flock of others; and when he closes his eyes for the last time he hears words like 'York', 'reflexes', and 'Aristide' pinging along the inner curves of his skull. Something is fitted around his mouth; he smells oxygen among other things. He is aware of a growing pressure around one of his biceps. He inhales deeply and falls into the depths of his own body. 

He is convinced he is in a dream when he sees the scalpel upraised, glittering and stolid, over his pumping, sweat-sheened chest. He does not believe it when he feels the cool edge, how it slides across his flesh, light as a feather, leaving behind a delicate trace of scarlet. It isn't until he feels warm tendrils crawling down the sides of his ribs, and his heart beating faster within them, that he suspects something is deeply and irrevocably wrong. The masks don't think so; one of them flashes a light in his eyes, and in the brief moment after the glare dissipates he sees the figure nodding agreeably before withdrawing and merging with a complicated mirage of pulsing screens and stainless steel. He watches all this with a detached interest; his sternum tickles; when he lazily tries to scratch at it a hand reaches out and firmly places his own at his side—all done in a reassuring matter, with the gentle grasp and almost motherly concern, and he remembers the nurse.  _ I’ll be watching you, keeping you under.  _ The unheard snapping of invisible threads, and he is unmoored, borne away by black tides. 

_ You’ve got nothing to worry about. _

***

The screaming wakes him up, his own screams and the pain. Fire courses through frayed nerves, searing his insides and tensing his muscles, bringing him closer to the light: a massive dish carrying a dozen suns. A glove callously swipes the constellation away and he is confronted by an obscure visage. There is an electronic beeping pestering him, irritatingly close and completely unreachable. Glass eyes without a face regard him, and the thing turns away, looking to an overhead gallery covered in tinted glass.

To continue now would be a mistake, says a familiar voice, it’s the male voice that spoke to him on the way in.

There is no time, wafts down an authoritative voice from on high, proceed with the operation.

Up the dosage on the coagulants, orders the mask.

He desperately wants to tell them to stop, he is convinced that if can say a word, anything that would make sense, he can make them stop, but the latex slugs burrowing in his guts makes it impossible for him to stop crying out in fear and agony the likes of which he had scarcely been able to conceive. Green light dancing on a black veil, the chiming notes reaching a hysterical pitch, and he spasms on the table—a flopping creature on a harshly illuminated dissection tray, powerless to stop the inexorable vivisection. And he is dancing along a jittering green line in empty space, a waltz with death, and a flat wailing intrudes upon the conclusion of their final movement; the drapes are closed and the chairs are stacked and the shining chandelier with all its stars is extinguished.     

He floats in a lightless pool, he feels clammy, frigid barriers press against his back and legs when he uncurls from his fetal position.  _ Oh God _ , he realizes with finality,  _ I’m going to drown here _ . Somehow, he isn’t surprised, not even when the viscous fluid floods his involuntary clenching throat. Then the cell opens.   

The spectacle of his blooming body now has an audience, a single person standing behind the head of the table. A push of a blood-drenched hand there, the tug of a knife here, and his head lolls backwards at an obscene angle and he gains a clear glimpse of the Lady towering over him: A dripping effigy of claggy ivory whose sole adornment is a cloying perfume of carbolic acid. She is not breathing; she peers over her jutting collarbones and spreads her incredibly long fingers over his face.  _ No _ , he mouths, the Lady is death,  _ no _ . The masks continue slicing him up, heedless of the corpse reaching for their patient. Decibels are exponentially rising in the room, in no small part due to him, and hears the labored breathing of a pump and the beeps are growing less and less persistent.

He can't go on like this, a mask pleads, he'll flatline!

He's still alive after the first one, isn't he? Please continue with your operation Dr. York, orders the Voice, resolute and undeniable.

Give him another shot of the epinephrine. Where the hell is the crash cart?

Here, doc. 

A slight pinch, Mr. Becket. 

He cannot scream, when the time comes, not with the slick palm clamped over his lips, smothering him. Someone is fondly caressing his cheek. Someone else is shouting and running loose a long line of swears. 

Defibrillator, now! 

What's happening, Dr. York?

V fib. But it's not too late…

He's someplace else now, sitting in a classroom if all the animal stickers are anything to go by; the blinds are closed and the lights turned off so that they may better see the video taking place on the far wall. He exchanges notes without paper with a girl in the back and together they watch a spider hanging in the abyss, spinning a web in eternity. Fine strands quivering in the shadows, so close that he is tempted to reach out for them: they are like moonbeams criss-crossing the night sky.

Lightning flashes, shocking him out of childhood and into the operating room. The masks gather round and peel adhesive pads off of him while others close the wound with a kind of glue. The pain is ebbing, and he grants himself a sigh of relief. 

You are a modern Hippocrates, doc, says a mask changing plastic bags filled with a clear fluid. Two successful resuscitations in a row! In a situation like this...that’s remarkable work, doc.

York, he presumes, disagrees. It wasn’t me, the doc wipes sweat off his own forehead, Becket must be a very healthy man. Nothing I did could’ve brought him back. 

Like hell he is. You worked wonders.

York gestures at his patient. You’d really call him that now? 

Better him than us. The mask finishes his work and shrugs.

Indeed.

Shall we start the signal? the mask asks.  

He’s ready.

The diodes are fixed all along his brain stem and spinal cord, the mask explains while rolling in a table covered in screens and readouts. Oddly enough, that procedure was a lot easier, the mask adds.

I know

He quickly loses interest in this inane babble; he’s worried about the thing from the morgue advancing towards him—the runaway corpse, looming over his inverted field of view, its covered head to toe in a viscous fluid that swirls all over her pallid flesh like oil on water; the substance doesn’t so much as drip to the floor, as it actually sloughs off of her, a shedding skin she carelessly plods through. She moves gingerly, doesn’t stop until his scalp is practically pressed against her rigid stomach, and she cocks her head at him. Black hair, plastered with filth, hangs down, surrounding him. He cannot move; his vocal cords are shot. Nightmares deprive you of everything, all except for the knowledge that there was a time when you could do more, and therefore, might be able save yourself if you try hard enough—a hope that damns more than it redeems. 

We will key the diodes one by one. Not too fast, mind. He’s still fragile.

The cramped insides of the APC bathed in warm emergency lights. Keegan is in the back, gripping his head and groaning. He lays a hand on his shoulder and his squadmate turns around, lifting his face, and the blood pouring out his nostrils are twin black streams in the red glow. An air of helplessness permeating the lurid shadows. 

He wants to say something, anything really, but the girl’s smoldering eyes are on him and he’s feeling pretty embarrassed...

*** 

The procedure probably lasted for all of five minutes, they were only teeth after all, but he was utterly exhausted when the anesthesia, or, more accurately, the worst of its effects wore off. The room was bigger than he remembered, with numerous beds and chairs placed against the white walls. Ignoring the plastic tubes tugging at one arm, he feebly propped himself up on his elbows.  

Immediately, as if in response to his movements, the door at the far end opened and a nurse bustled in. He let out a sigh of relief when he saw that it was  _ the nurse _ : a cute blonde with her hair drawn back in a bun. He relaxed at the sight of her naked face, her honest eyes and full lips. Everything is going to be okay, he thought, she was right after all. 

She stopped at the foot of his bed, watching him. 

“I know you,” he told her.

“You’ve always known me.”

“You’re the nurse. Told me I had nothing to worry about.”

“That’s right.” She bared her teeth in the rough approximation of a smile. “Wasn’t that bad, was it?”

“Not at all...” Maybe it was drug-induced bravado, or maybe it was something more sincere and genuine, but for whatever, he then asked, “What’s your name?”

She pursed her mouth in barely concealed distaste and just when he was about to apologize she answered, “Alice,” and tittered at her own response.

Thinking it was some sort of joke, he smiled too. 

Still half-smiling, she walked around and paused at his bedside. She was so close, yet so far, swimming under waves of nausea rolling towards a throbbing sky. He was tired and wanted nothing more than a dreamless sleep. Still, an important question still nagged at him.

“Where the hell am I?”

“Recovery,” she whispered softly, such a pretty voice, “You’re not strong enough...yet.” She laid a hand on his chest and pressed him down. “Rest is the best medicine. How about you lay down for awhile?”

He remembered the nightmares. Steel butchering helpless flesh. “I’m not sure I want to.”

“I’ll be here, don’t worry. I’ll wake you up if it looks like your in trouble.” 

He nodded, closed his eyes, and sank back into the narcotic haze. “Will I see you again?” he carelessly slurred the words. “We need to meet...in better circumstances.” 

No answer; but he felt the blankets part, and the nurse sliding in, pressing against him. He was pretty sure this wasn’t normal practice, that is, if this wasn’t a dream or hallucination brought on by whatever the tubes were pumping into his veins. “It’s alright,” she whispered in his ear, her hair brushing against his dry mouth, “it’s alright.” It was becoming humid all of a sudden; the turgid sheets weighed him down, soaking his surgical gown and his entire body, pasting him to the mattress. Bony limbs intertwined with his, and her hair loosened from its pins and wet strands got caught between his lips. He gagged, and the arms around his chest squeezed tighter. “It’s alright. Don’t get up. You want to get better, don’t you? I’ll keep the bad dreams away.”

He distractedly freed a hand from her grip and laid it between her breasts: he felt no heartbeat beneath her damp bare skin. Her cheek brushed against his, leaving behind a tickling trail of droplets. She had to be a mere breath away, but he felt none—no warm inhale or exhale. 

_ Don’t look _ .

He didn’t dare.

It was just a dream, after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> I've always had a special fondness for dream sequences, surrealism, and hallucinatory ways of writing, so this fic is pure self-indulgence. Besides that, I don't really have much to take note of. One of these days I guess I'll post something that doesn't involve someone suffering terribly, but that doesn't interest me really. I'm sorry if some of the dialogue is confusing but that was what I was going for. Anyway, I've always felt that bad endings and sensory assault were staples of the FEAR series, and I'm all to happy to carry the torch. I really want to do something with the Point Man set after the first two (and only, for me) games that will deal with memory and guilt. So yes, more emotional suffering.
> 
> Btw, if you want to play a fun horror game that has been terribly overlooked. I recommend Clive Barker's Undying. Its flawed in some ways, but it was way ahead of its time and definitely worth a play through. Clive Barker, hence the title, contributed his creative energies to the game's plot. A notable contribution he made was claiming the original protagonist was not handsome enough and no one would want to play the game as an unattractive person, so the developers introduced a new protagonist - a handsome Irish occult investigator who looks like a Hollywood actor. I just thought that was funny.


End file.
